Monday, January 14, 2013

Hilariously Clueless Shit Andrew Sullivan Says, Ctd.

Today, Mr. Sullivan really bears down and manages to pinch off a double-loaf of steaming cluelessness in a single post.

The Subject: Jodie Foster's Very Long Speech at the Golden Globes which I missed owing to the fact that I did not watch it.

Part One, in which Mr. Sullivan -- who bailed on the gay-hating Right 30 years too late, and who finally delivered a formal "I Break With Thee!" jeremiad in book-form in 2007 -- scolds Ms. Foster for coming out so incredibly late in the day and with such narcissistic need for drama:

...A highlight of her narcissistic, self-loving speech:

I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends and family, co-workers, and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met. But now, apparently, I’m told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance, and a prime-time reality show.

What unadulterated bullshit. She never came out until, very obliquely, in 2007. And virtually every coming out these days is low-key, simple and no-drama.

Part Two, in which Mr. Sullivan -- who continues to alibi his decades of willfully disregarding the true nature and history of American Conservatism by invoking a nonexistent Golden Era when a Reaganite Camelot full of pure Conservative awesome bestrode the land -- scolds Ms. Foster for invoking a nonexistent Golden Age when everything was so much better than it is now:

...She goes on:

[S]eriously, if you had been a public figure from the time that you were a toddler, if you’d had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then, maybe, then you too would value privacy against all else. Privacy. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was. I have given everything up there, from the time that I was 3 years old. That’s reality show enough, don’t you think?

"How beautiful it once was"? When gay people were put in jail, or mental institutions, or thrown out of their families - all because of the "beauty" of privacy for Hollywood royalty like Foster? And she honestly believes it's courageous to come out in a retirement speech?

OK, when I started reading the first part in gray, I thought it was actually quoting Sullivan, which made the "fragile young girl" part really jarring.

As for the second part... Part of me agrees with him. However, he was the one defending the exact same people who were causing those dark Stonewall days. The homophobes are the direct descendants of the Dixiecrats and the George Wallace segregationists. As they say, haters gonna hate. And so they do.

As for Jodie Foster's comments on privacy, I entirely agree. I'm an IT tech, which means I'm a digital janitor, and I regularly have people demanding my personal cell and home phone numbers and personal email address and pager number so I can respond to their every whim day or night. (I actually had a doctor call my parents in another city and demand they find me and send me into work, on a weekend.) While I did not listen to her speech, I think Sullivan is just desperate to grind an ax by turning a valid comment about privacy into a comment about gay rights.

Gays must have total absolute respect but I'm too narrow minded, navel-gazing, narcissistic, and un-empathetic to possibly imagine that this should extend to other disenfranchised people against whom I helped - along with the GOP - to wage rhetorical and political war these past 30 odd years.

It's all about me me me me me for Dandy-Andy. Oh, and by the way, I got the message that GOPers hate gays about 30 years too late. Thanks Andy, for playing Tigellinus while Nero burned the city, and then pretending that you were really Thrasea Paetus all along. You fool only yourself, Bill Maher, and his pseudo-liberal bigots.

You utterly fail to demonstrate anything problematical with what Sullivan wrote

His relationship with conservatism has nothing to do with the question of when and how Foster came out.

And his comment about Foster's view of a golden age is accurate. Once again, nothing you say indicates anything else.

Seriously buddy. This is a hilariously clueless post. You seem to want to simply toss insults at Sullivan without doing the slightest bit of work to actually develop a point. Are you taking lessons from the loony right or something?

Oh fer christs sake, what a catty bitch. I had such a thing for Jodie Foster when I was about 12, same age, we both skateboarded... and then 20 years later, the coincidence of surfing in Baja with the base player from Jodie Foster's Army and with him paddling on the shoulder while I drove through a deep deep barrel and later showing up at the requisite camp fire and the JFA dude starts raving about how deep I got (but I digress).

Jesus, coming out is far too personal for anyone to bash anyone for the choices they make. Some people take the inevitible hate and can throw it back twice as hard while some internalize it where it festers and fumes and never leaves. Accept it Andrew, your legacy will never match hers.

- "His relationship with conservatism has nothing to do with the question of when and how Foster came out."

Technically true, but Sullivan supported Reagan, and Reagan was the apotheosis of the Moral Majority Coalition and Family Values Coalition. Quick history lesson: The Moral Majority was founded in the early 70's (I think officially '72) to mobilize the evangelicals who did not want to get into politics. That fails to mention that the evangelicals were still feeling the sting of the great '64 rebuke of the George Wallace Dixiecrats. The Moral Majority was started shortly after the Southern Strategy because the Bible and fundamentalist White-church Christianity was always the first place slavery and segregation was defended in public.

The evangelical coalition had three funding planks. The primary was abortion, the secondary was "Godless communism", and the third was "militant homosexuality". With the fall of communism, the militant child-buggering homos became second-fiddle in their calliope of fear.

Reagan was the first president who blatantly and slavishly pandered to the evangelicals. Many sources said he was the first president elected by the Christian Right. (Ironic, as he was not religious when young and was an ardent follower of astrology.) Reagan also started the Republican tradition of filling positions of power with evangelicals.

So... Sullivan supported Reagan, who was put in power, and returned the favor, by a group of people who were mobilized to give cover to the racists, and kept people voting and sending money by fear of the baby killers, commies, and militant pederast homos.

As an aside, I would invite you to check out Chick tracks, those little evangelical comics that became so popular in the 80's. Look at all the ones about homosexuality. As I recall, at least two portrayed gays as purposefully getting infected with HIV so they could all donate blood at the same time, poison the country's blood supply, and thus start the overthrow of Western (Christian) Civilization.

- "And his comment about Foster's view of a golden age is accurate. Once again, nothing you say indicates anything else."

Horse shit. Jodie Foster's comments were about a golden age where privacy was important. We now live in a society where people who don't, as a scurrilous wag named Driftglass put it, "Empty their pocket lint for all to see on a regular basis," are treated as social deviants. I may be a misanthrope, but I know a lot about my neighbors and co-workers that I really don't need to know. As for me, being gay can be a saving grace, as a lot of people *don't* want me talking, and so I have some enforced privacy.

While I agree with Sullivan on the importance of being out and the change that makes in social acceptance, I also know that there is a huge difference between "out" and "stuff other people doesn't need to know". He's taking a tangent and dragging it in a direction where he can have a melodramatic snit.

He probably just didn't like the end of "Contact".

- "Seriously buddy. This is a hilariously clueless post. You seem to want to simply toss insults at Sullivan without doing the slightest bit of work to actually develop a point. Are you taking lessons from the loony right or something?"

There is a difference between telling someone "I think your point could be better developed," and trolling someone. For example, I called two of your comments horse shit, but did not call you a horse's ass. You could be a pleasant and intelligent person who is just having a bad day -- I've snapped a few times on the internets -- but I think some of your comments are a fresh pile.